St Annes beach

BGS seismologist Glenn Ford said: "We have checked our network and we don't have anything that would be an earthquake. We did pick up some signals which are definitely not seismic, but may be consistent with a sonic boom.

"The signals might also be spurious, and may be random. It's a very busy location, the Blackpool area. There's consistent noise from trains and traffic, so it may just be coincidental.

"We can definitely discount that it was an earthquake. We are trying to establish whether there are other sources."

A sonic boom is the sound associated with shock waves created whenever an object travelling through the air travels faster than the speed of sound.

It is most commonly associated with military jets.

Mr Ford said the BGS had been in touch with British Aerospace and confirmed that no jets were present over the Fylde coast at the time the explosions were heard.

Minor earthquakes had previously been reported at Cuadrilla's fracking site off Preston New Road, however, there have been no recorded tremors in the area since December 14.

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